


Impasse

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [8]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9290654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: A deadly standoff on the Citadel. One shot is fired.





	

Ashley Williams stands, braced, her gun in her hands. She smells smoke, from the sabotaged skycar behind her.

Behind her, the councilors she’s sworn to protect. In front of her, Shepard and his squad. Saying “trust me.” Saying “you know me.”

Does she?

Once she would have answered without hesitation. Of course Shepard was honest, trustworthy. A bit of a dork, but a stand-up guy, one of the least duplicitous people she’d ever met.

Unless that was all a cover, of course.

She’d shed tears at his fucking funeral, her, Ashley Williams; and instead he’d been fucking around with Cerberus for two years doing God knew what. And now he had the nerve to come back and say it was some kind of misunderstanding.

He was saying Udina was rotten, and she can believe that. She wants to believe that, badly, but it doesn’t add up. None of it adds up. Shepard in front of her, saying “trust me,” and the councilors behind her. Including Udina.

Ash took an oath to protect the Council. It’s her plain duty to honor that oath, no matter if she likes a single one of them or not.

When the shot comes, it’s so fast it almost doesn’t hurt.

 

#

 

Garrus Vakarian stands, ready, his gun in his hands. Shepard’s talking, stumbling over his words, but trying his best. Garrus can see the councilors behind Williams: Tevos and Sparatus tense, uncertain; Udina tapping away at that console. Everyone’s body temperature and heart rate is elevated.

Garrus is fairly sure Udina’s armed, from the lump under his jacket.

Garrus isn’t even surprised to find that Udina’s rotten, even if this coup has to be some kind of desperation ploy. But he’s not the one who needs to be convinced. Williams is, and she’s one of the most stubborn humans of his acquaintance.

He watches her eyes shift to the side, observes the slightest waver in her stance. Shepard’s not even talking now; he’s run out of arguments, waiting for Ashley to make a move. 

It occurs to Garrus, with dull inevitability, that Shepard’s not going to take the shot. Maybe it’s because the two of them used to be involved, maybe it’s something else, but either way, Shepard’s hesitating too long.

Ash’s eyes shift again, and then her jaw firms up. Garrus recognizes this one; he’s seen it plenty of times across the poker table.

This is what Williams looks like when she’s all in.

He pulls the trigger.

It’s not the first time Garrus has killed someone who used to be a friend.

 

#

 

The shot goes off. Shepard flinches. For a wild moment, he thinks he fired after all.

But his hand hasn’t moved.

Ash crumples, falls. Udina pulls a gun, and now Shepard fires. Without Ash in front of him, he can move again, freed from the locked-down terror he felt with Ash’s body between him and his target. But with the terror gone, he already feels the dull, sinking weight of his failure, aware of Garrus’s looming presence behind him.

And then it’s Bailey in the elevator; the whole thing is fucked up, their stand-off was for  _ nothing _ . They had time. Shepard wavered, froze up, forcing one friend to put an end to another, and it was all for nothing.

Garrus’s expression doesn’t change, tight and closed-up. Shepard answers Bailey’s questions, listens to the councilors without actually hearing, too conscious of the bodies on the ground.

Someone from C-Sec at least had the decency to cover her up.

Shepard gets away as soon as he could, but every fall of his boots on the deck sounds like failure.


End file.
